CAP 5 - Part 4 - Primary Ability Discussion

[jc104]

Bearing in mind that our typing does not really benefit from sun, I don't think we are really going to make this thing a sunmon without using a sun-based ability, or possibly arena trap. While of course we could change direction completely, I don't think we should just do so on a whim. Basically, this leaves us with Chlorophyll, Harvest, Flower Gift, and Solar Power. Chlorophyll and Solar Power both fulfill very offensive roles, and the former would force significant competition with Venusaur. Really, then, I think this is just a choice between Harvest and Flower Gift for me.

I think Flower Gift is the better choice. The effect that it has is altogether more predictable - I can say with some certainty that it will cause CAP-5 to be primarily sun-based, and that it will certainly help greatly against Lati@s without making CAP5 too generally strong. The effect of harvest is very difficult to guess - there is a huge variety of possibilities. You could find that a pinch berry set becomes very strong and CAP5 just becomes a sweeper. You could find LumRest sets becoming overpowered (seriously, this could very easily happen - if you can OHKO CAP5 it's no problem, and CAP5 isn't even useful, but if not it's going to stall you for at least 16 turns). Flower Gift is just the simplest and most effective option - I suspect a number of you are really just supporting harvest because it's fun and interesting, rather than in an attempt to fulfill the concept.

For those of you that are worried about CAP5 being underpowered outside of sun, none of you seem to have considered CAP5's special attack, which is entirely unaffected by flower gift and could easily demolish politoed even in the rain. We have good control over how much difference flower gift makes by altering the balance between physical and special attacking.

[alexwolf]

Originally Posted by Fat ganj4lF

I think a point should be addressed, since it has being mentioned already a couple of times in this discussion. While I like Harvest and all, there's no way you can check offensive Latios without resorting to Sitrus or Haban Berry. Some users (alexwolf comes to mind, but I guess some others assumed that too I guess) said that only average special bulk (90/90 if I remember correctly) will do the trick, even if holding a Lum. Now, let's do some calcs since noone posted any (yeah, this may be poll jumping again, but it's intended to show what levels of bulk are required to switch into Latios and live if not holding Sitrus / Haban, or outspeeding, or having Flower Gift in sun.




If CAP5 doesn't outspeed and doesn't hold the two previously mentioned berries (maybe we should exclude Salac too), it won't realistically be able to do anything before taking two of them. Considering Stealth Rock, to be able to take two Draco Meteors it needs to take less than 58.67% damage from a DM, since if we're assuming it's taking two of them, (58.67% * 1.5) = 88%, add SR in the mix and we have a dead CAP5. In most of the cases outlined here, CAP5 fails to take this kind of damage even with minimum damage rolls and maximum special bulk. While I see the merits of Harvest, it's cool in general, allows very high level of versatility, reliable recovery in Rest, whatever, to accomplish our goal (that was very explicitly stated in the previous thread by DJD: "We want CAP 5 to be an effective "answer" for the Latis", "CAP5 will be a one-stop shop for handling Lati@s in all its common forms", etc) we are forced to use Sitrus or Haban or Salac. This is not to say it's unacceptable or something, just don't expect to run LumRest while not outspeeding AND be a reliable answer to Latios; Sitrus is cool in my opinion, but it's almost a forced choice if we go that route and want to check Latios.

This is basically the idea that makes me more likely to support Flower Gift and Clorophyll: they allow us to switch into Latios in Sun without having to worry about very, very good special bulk (if you guys don't consider very good the special bulk of Jirachi or Latias, we're in a disagreement here...).

I don't remember saying that the CAP will be able to tank two DMs without Sitrus Berry. Also why are you dismissing Salac Berry? With it, the CAP would be able to take the first DM, get to activation range and then threaten Latios with either Crunch or Pursuit, exactly as if it had Chlorophyll.

Also we won't be forced to use a Sitrus Berry, as we don't want to counter Latios, just to check it well enough. How can you counter Latios anyway? Even with enough bulk or Speed it can always Trick us a scarf or a specs to the face. And let's not forget that not all Latios use Specs, and not all sun teams will only have the CAP to tank DMs (Heatran anyone?). Even without Sitrus Berry the CAP will still be able to restrict Latios to getting one kill max, as after a kill it gets Pursuit trapped, which is still a good answer to Latios for sun teams, meaning that LumRest will still be a perfectly viable set.

[ganj4lF]

You never said that directly, alexwolf. However I just assume we all agree on the content of this post, that very explicitly says:

We want CAP 5 to be an effective "answer" for the Latis.
I'm not using the word "counter" here, because every dweeb in Smogon loves to get into pedantic definitions about what is a "counter" or not. And I'm not going to get into that bullshit. It's a waste of time. Suffice to say, we want CAP5 to be able to make Sun team owners have almost no fear of Lati@s ever again. Do not bring up stupid gimmick moves Lati@s can run, like HP-Bug or whatever, as an argument that we can never "always beat" Lati@s. I'm talking about common cases here, and yes, I think we have every right to expect we can kick the shit out of Lati@s and not look back.

Now, maybe it's just me misunderstanding the whole thing, but this seems a bit more than a normal check / trapper / whatever. You don't just stop fearing Latios because you can Pursuit trap it if it's able to 2HKO your trapper on the switch; it basically means that you have to sac something to trap or revenge kill (or rely on a smart double switch, sure, but that's not always reliable). This made me (and not only me, I guess) think we should be able to switch directly into Latios and deal with it from there. If we want to follow a different route no problem, however relying on something else to absorb Draco Meteors is kinda against DJD's third point, that states we should help Sun with the lack of team slots (since you're basically implying a Steel type in addition to all the other roles).

Regarding Salac, I am not dismissing it. In fact, it is a cool option in my opinion; my purpose was just to make sure everything is aware that if we want to be able to switch into Latios directly, we can't to that if running LumRest AND not outspeeding. Just that. I was underlining the fact that "countering" (allow me to use that term even if it's not perfectly appropriate, I guess) Latios forces us into the use of very specific Berries, that are alreaby been listed. If what the majority of us want from CAP5 is a strong check, then feel free to disregard my previous post; if, however, someone else thinks it should be something more than that, then take a look to those calculations and draw the conclusions you feel more appropriate.

[Korski]

Needs Discussion:

Adaptability
Swift Swim
Water Veil (and similarly underwhelming abilities)

Done Discussing:

Arena Trap
Drought
Filter
Leaf Guard
Magic Guard
Regenerator
Shed Skin
Shield Dust
Simple
Solar Power
Solid Rock
Storm Drain
Thick Fat
Trace
Water Absorb

Short List (Continue Discussing):

Chlorophyll
Cloud Nine
Flower Gift
Harvest
Natural Cure

--------------------

This discussion is going so well I feel unneeded! This will be a short update from me for now; I just want to put these categories up to show everyone where the wind is blowing. Things can still move around a bit, but it's pretty clear to me that the abilities currently on the short list provide ample ammunition for discussion and have received a vast majority of the attention in this thread.

At this point in discussion, I would like to try and focus on clearing out the "Needs Discussion" list, and then I would like us to finish up the thread by concentrating on the short list and comparing the abilities directly to one another: "Ability A is best because" and "Ability B is better than ability A because" are the sorts of arguments I would like to see. Bonus points for not trying to have a stats discussion in the middle of the ability thread, and mega bonus points for acknowledging both pros and cons for multiple abilities. I'm generally wary of people posting long tracts or last-ditch arguments in the polls, so I would be grateful if we could get all or most of that out of our systems in the home stretch.

[TheTraininator]

I'm happy we can keep discussing Harvest, even though that was to be expected, because that seems to be the answer to all of CAP 5's troubles, imo.

I might end up sounding like a bit of a broken record, but I'm going to expand on a previous point I had about Harvest. No, Harvest does not make CAP 5 a surefire counter to every threat that plague Sun teams, but its major advantage is that it can help make it a counter to any of the threats that plague Sun teams.

Let me expound.

Harvest would make this Pokemon so versatile that with a combination of resist berries, Lum berry, or pinch berries, it can be designed to counter any one of sun team's major threats, using the team the counter the rest. The problem is, the opponent won't know what set you are running until they find out your berry, so they have to tread lightly until then. This makes it not so broken that it is the go to counter for everything, but so versatile that the opponent has to think twice about spamming Draco on their Latios. And isn't that the pooint of the concept? To make your opponents think twice about spamming the most common Pokemon types and weathers?

Also, I'd like to point out that if it carries Lum rest, it doesn't need to be incredibly specially bulky as long as it outspeeds specs latios. If Latios goes for the Draco, simply switch in and rest up to full health and wake up right away, and the second Draco will do less damage, allowing you to play mind games with rest and pursuit. Easy as pie.

To sum up: Harvest kicks ass.

[kalamadude]

I probably shouldn't be writing, because I'm not the most avid battler or a CAP regular, but this Harvest discussion seems like absolutely the wrong idea to me. Most of the arguments for it expound its incredible versatility, all the great things it could do for our CAP, and in general just how great it can be. That's precisely why I think it's a bad idea. CAP seems to very consistently make its Pokémon far more powerful than they need to be, and I think it will just hurt the concept. Harvest is simply too good. Sitrus + Substitute can allow even Exeggutor to stall indefinitely (and I have seen this happen with some success). Lum+Rest gives unprecedented recovery options plus an immunity to all statuses. This is in the same vein as Vaporeon in rain, whose strength is mitigated by very lackluster offensive capabilities. I may be poll-jumping a bit, but if we intend to be able to trap Lati@s and threaten Politoed, I do not foresee a lack of offensive prowess. As Manaphy has demonstrated - Hydration + even meager offensive capabilities = broken Mon.

That's not to mention the myriad other options - type resist berries would give CAP a free extra resistance to whatever it chooses, easing sweeping. Salac and other pinch berries can allow it to boost even if later down the line we decide we don't want to give it boosting options. Harvest is simply too good by my reckoning and I will not be voting for it.

I feel Chlorophyll best exemplifies our wishes, and everything that can be said on the subject has been. I will simply reiterate that there does not need to be overlap with Venusaur if we simply refrain from giving CAP boosting moves (especially Growth). Without boosting moves, speedy Chlorophyll CAP becomes an ideal trapper for Lati@s in the sun, establishes a reliance on sun (discouraging use of it on rain teams), and makes an excellent pivot since we can threaten anything we switch into with an outsped coverage move without inflating our speed stat.

[Rhys DeAnno]

Originally Posted by Fat Korski

Needs Discussion:

Adaptability
Swift Swim
Water Veil (and similarly underwhelming abilities)

Adaptability: I wasn't so wary of this at first, but the more I think about it the more useless it is. CAP5 doesn't actually need coverage moves to handle the things it's supposed to threaten at all, and if a Poke doesn't use coverage moves Adaptability is basically a straight up attack boost ala Huge Power. On PoryZ Adaptability is interesting because it can consistently boost its neutral STAB at the expense of helping its coverage too with Download. On CAP5 however, this would be a dull stat-altering ability which accomplishes nothing we can't do at a later stage.

Swift Swim: This one is actually pretty tempting, but I feel if we used it it would be a little too gamist. Literally the only reason this would make sense at all for a Sun mon is the way Aldaron's proposal shook down, and putting a rain mon ability on CAP5 just to abuse Rain's legal restrictions doesn't sit well.

In addition to that, this would be pretty much only effective against rain teams. It would very likely not be able to outspeed Latios unless you were facing a rain team, and relying on opposing rain for one of the most important checks a Sun pokemon is supposed to have seems pretty unwise. Latios is often used on Sand and Weatherless HO/Dragonspam too remember (in fact the specs set particularly has reason to be popular on Dragonspam).

Water Veil: This is a pretty interesting ability since it completely solves the problem of Scald from Waters and WoW from Ghosts; it asks us no questions and tells us no lies. Sure, CAP5 could be hit by Toxic, but if he's already switched into Politoed he can Pursuit anyway to force Politoed to either stay in and die eventually or switch out and take tons of damage. The same goes for most any ghost or bulky water lacking recovery, and even those that have recovery must fear staying in and facing Crunch. Water Veil doesn't help with the Latis much, but presumably that would mean we'd need to solve that problem in the stats step (Its worth noting that even a mostly crippled CAP5 can probably revenge -2 Latios as long as it isn't burned).

Though natural cure is nice to prevent the buildup of toxic damage, toxic is less threatening to a pivot with leftovers anyway because the turn counter rarely has time to build up much. Additionally, our pivot will possibly be able to leave his mark on the battlefield with Rapid Spin or Pursuit, meaning a slow death by Toxic wouldn't be in vain. On the other side of the comparison, Natural Cure doesn't let us be nearly as consistently effective when doing things like switching into Politoed, Rotom-W, or Jellicent, since a burn from Scald or WoW will completely hamper our ability to punish that pokemon with Pursuit when it switches out. Even if we cure the burn upon our switch out, the opportunity to function in our role as a trapper has been lost in that instance.

Of these abilities, I feel only Water Veil has merit, and I would prefer it over Natural Cure.

[alexwolf]

TheTraininator said something right that most people that are skeptic about Harvest should consider. The CAP can't counter Latios only with good special bulk and Sitrus Berry / Salac Berry, but it can also counter it with better Speed than Latios and good but not huge special bulk. Let's say that we give to the CAP 115 Speed and 90 HP / 110 SpD, which is some good special bulk but nothing huge. And let's say that we max its HP and Speed. Here is what Specs DM from Latios does to the CAP:

252 SpA Choice Specs Latios Draco Meteor vs. 244 HP / 160 SpD Keldeo: 316-373 (82.29 - 97.13%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Although the CAP still gets OHKOed after SR most of the time, this is just an example to show how the CAP can still counter Latios with Harvest without the need to have huge special bulk and/or the use of Sitrus / Salac Berry. So to avoid the OHKO from latios while using Harvest + LumRest, the CAP would just need to have 5 HP or SpD more and take some EVs frop HP and put them to SpD.

The above scenario shows that with Harvest there are many ways that the CAP can take in order to fill its role as a pivot, and all are perfectly good and viable, something that adds flexibility to our options for base stats and to the CAP itself as well, but doesn't distract the CAP too much from its concept. No matter what we do and as long as we only give it mediocre physical bulk, Fire, Flying, and Bug moves will murder it, while strong Fighting moves will dent it or OHKO it if it doesn't have a Chople Berry. And as long as we pick carefull its moveset, it is still going to get countered by the things we want, namely Steel, Fighting, and Fire types, Hydreigon and possibly other things that i forgot.

tl;dr Harvest gives to the CAP any tool that it could possibly want to deal with the threats we want it to, without assuming any ridiculous amount of base stats (offense, defense, speed, you name it). Even though the ability itself is really versatile, as long as we are somewhat careful in the other stages, the CAP will not derail from its original concept, something that i explained in the above paragraph.

Also let's please not compare Manaphy to this CAP. The only thing they have in common is the insta-heal ability and immunity to status. Manaphy has a way better defensive typing that is difficult to take advantage of, especially from the physical side, great all around stats, two great boosting moves, and good offensive coverage with just two moves that is further boosted by Drizzle. The two Pokemon are completely different and any comparison between them brings zero things to the table (except from the fact that insta-heal and status immunity is a very good tool and has the potential to become broken under the right circumstances, which we already knew).

[Nyktos]

Thoughts on the "needs discussion" abilities:

Adaptability - We're very likely to be relying primarily on STABs to deal damage, as the majority of the the things we want to threaten are weak to one of them. This, on the surface, might seem a pro for Adaptability, but it's actually a strong argument against. Boosting STABs on CAP5 is very close to simply being "boost all damage by 33%", which is largely a poor use of an ability slot. CAP stat spreads are always designed around damage calculations, and it's quite typical that a CAP's Atk or SpA stat is "the minimum needed to KO [thing we threaten] under [reasonable conditions]". We're going to do that with or without Adaptability; the only difference is we'll need lower stats to do it with. While having a lower BST would be nice after Aurumoth's excesses, let's let stats do stats' job and abilities do abilities' job.

Swift Swim - Even ignoring the rules-lawyerish aspects of this, it actually doesn't do anything useful. The rainmons we want to KO are by and large not especially fast, and the fast things we want to KO are not exclusive to rain teams. Yes, this makes it useless to rain teams, but Chlorophyll or Flower Gift do that nearly as well and actually help us achieve our goals.

Water Veil and friends - While I don't believe a "minimalistic" ability dooms our CAP to failure, there is absolutely no need to avoid a strong ability. Much as I have reservations about Flower Gift and Harvest on power level, this is much too extreme a reaction.

That said, Water Veil itself is not useless, and given one of the aims of Natural Cure is to help against Scald burns it may warrant some consideration. While I previously said good things about Cure, I've soured on it quite a bit since because it's actually really awkward against Scald in that you're still burned while you actually have to deal with the Water-type that's using it. Water Veil doesn't have that problem. I don't necessarily think it's worth considering, just that it does stand out a bit from the pack of "underwhelming abilities".

I'll post my thoughts on the shortlist abilities later if I have time.

[Project_Mars]

I actually like Adaptability a bit, since it does actually work a bit in letting a 'mon hit things harder and can help CAP take out Lati@s. An, admittedly rare due to the insanely low speed, example would be Crawdaunt in VGC, which can ohko the best walls in that format (Cress), due to Adaptability.

Swift Swim has no real use for CAP, due to the overspecialization as pointed out in previous posts.

Water Veil and the like could work pretty well actually. Not really sure what to expand on that with, although if it's for the primary ability then I would prefer Natural Cure over Water Veil. If CAP is a Special Attacker, then the burn won't hurt as much as it would if it's a physical attacker.

Harvest would be real nice for ensuring that this pokemon is used on Sun Teams, which is what we want. Harvest can also trigger out of sun, so it isn't completely useless either. I could see this going with both that and Natural Cure/Water Veil for this CAP's abilities. (Edit: also, the aim is to increase Sun's viability, so why is making CAP versitile a bad thing? Rain and Sand are going to be hard to displace simply because they have awesome pokemon that enjoy and abuse their effects, including some very versitile ones.)

[inanimate blob]

Adaptability

An interesting ability, to say the least. Grass/Darl actually provides fairly effective coverage (Water, Ground, Rock, Psychic, Ghost). There are, however, a few threats in the metagame that need powerful moves to take down, which coverage may help - but wouldn't superSTAB attacks help to free up movepool slots? If we're designing CAP5 to take down certain threats, shouldn't we make sure it can really take down these threats? Additionally, those extra moveslots that having souped-up STABs could help transform CAP5 from just a sweeper to the potential SubSeeder or wall, which could be a possibility, I guess. It's definitely an ability to consider, as it takes down Hippowdon, Politoed, and Tyranitar with relative ease, I assume.

Swift Swim

As stated before, this is definitely a "gimmicky" ability. It depends on the opponent bringing Politoed...which is essentially what we're going for. Swift Swim also discourages using CAP5 on a Rain team, since they're incompatible. :D But, being a Grass-type, it would also discourage having Politoed coming into battle, along with becoming an immediate threat in the battle against potentially the rest of the opponents' party. I've seen a Kingdra or two in OU doing the very same thing.

Water Veil/Subpar Abilities

Water Veil is by no means a bad ability, especially if CAP5 turns out to be a physical Pokèmon (and with Sucker Punch, Pursuit, Seed Bomb...we may be tempted!). It actually may warrant a discussion outside of subpar abilities.

But, other subpar abilities do relegate a discussion of their own. Perhaps they're situational, perhaps they're already covered with another Pokèmon. The good thing, however, with having a bad ability is that we're able to be more liberal with stats and movepool later on which coupled with the bad abilities may make a powerful Pokèmon in it's own right.

[erisia]

Adaptability is not something we need at all, and given the lack of coverage that seems to be the popular consensus on how to make preserve CAP's threat list, I don't see why we can't just give CAP5 a better Attack stat instead of giving it a lower one + Adaptability. Plus, it does nothing to actually solve the problems of Scald Burns, switching into Water attacks, being used on Rain teams. It just seems like a waste of an ability for this concept imo.

Swift Swim is interesting but then it's only of any benefit against opposing Rain teams. Sand teams would like this just as much as Sun teams do, and Swift Swim doesn't actually convey any advantage while Sun is out, making it harder to maintain the offensive presence that Sun teams need to be successful. That said, it is better than Chlorophyll when you're trying to shift from the opponent's Rain into bringing out Ninetales, so it has some merit. However, I don't think it has as much merit as Chlorophyll overall, so I'm against it being the primary ability.

Water Veil is great for blocking Scald burns and the occasional Rotom-W / Jellicent Will O Wisp. However, Shield Dust gives it a run for its money; while it doesn't do anything against the latter, it completely stops Jirachi, a key Rain staple, from spreading paralysis, not to mention Thunders from other Rain abusers. I think it's important to note that the main reason for Shield Dust being on the DONE list is that it was decided to be better as a secondary ability than as a primary ability, so bear in mind that voting for Water Veil as our primary ability will mean that any of CAP's subsequent abilities will be even more moderate. I really don't want this, considering the more potent benefits that Chlorophyll, Flower Gift, and Harvest could provide.

I think the main merit to Chlorophyll and Flower Gift is that they allow CAP to become consistently better at checking Water types and Lati@s in Sun than in other weathers. No other abilities facilitate the rise of Sun teams and the fulfillment of the concept more specifically than this, except for Harvest from a somewhat different angle.

[Unoriginal Name]

I'm on a bit of a time crunch, so I'll only comment one one ability, and only in a few sentences.

Swift Swim No. Just no. First off, it just seems wrong that we abuse legalities like this. It's like an ackward loophole that was made specifically to be abused. However, the real reason I hate this? This CAP isn't just about lowering the usage of one type (Water), it's also about raising the usage of another (Fire). Who would bother putting this on Sun teams if the ability in no way helps with that? Why not put it on a goodstuffs? It's just as good, after all. Really, this ability behaves best on goodstuffs as it requires taking down the Sun to actually take effect, which doesn't help with the concept of CAP 5.

So, yeah. I continue to support Harvest, think Chlorophyll will just make it another Venu, and agree Flower Gift would be decent.

Off-topic edit: Post 69. Tee hee.

[The Steam Punk]

Right now, Harvest seems like the best idea imo. So many strategies can be pulled off with an unlimited supply of berries. Personally, my Exeggcutor carries a Sitrus Berry, but Lum Berries and stat-boosting berries work well too.

On the other hand, Swift Swim is my least favorite. That would only work in Rain, and Politoed isn't going to switch into a Grass-type Pokemon in the first place. And anyway, Pokemon that abuse rain like Jellicent and Politoed aren't too fast anyway.

Just my 2 cents.

[psykokitty]

Well, all my thoughts on Adaptability and Swift Swim have been expressed by Nyktos and erisia much more eloquently than I could ever achieve. As far as the 'underwhelming' abilities go, I think that choosing just one of them (such as Water Veil or Limber) would leave us too open to other statuses that could cripple CAP5 just as badly as the one we opt to prevent - I think something more holistic such as Natural Cure, Harvest + Lum, or things on the discussed list such as Shield Dust or Leaf Guard would better help us achieve our goals with this CAP.

[Legend13]

I really don't think we should be giving this CAP Rain abilities like Swift Swim, as it might find its way onto Rain teams, which is NOT what we want. As for Adaptability, Grass/Dark is awful coverage.
Since CAP5 won't be a sweeper, Harvest seems most appropriate here, and hey, maybe we'll be able to make a decent Harvest abuser. Because of this, Harvest takes precedence over Chlorophyll.

[Agile Turtle]

This seems to be going into a direction towards Shiftry in every way. Shiftry had so much wasted potential, more like stolen potential. Shiftry was fine, all it needed was a turn to set up growth/ nasty plot and it could be an amazing sweeper in sun. The problem was that they gave it little to no bulk paired with an awful defensive typing. It needs bulk. One thing we don't have for sun is a good stall pokemon. There are pokemon that can stall in hail, sandstorm and rain, but none in sun. The following abilities could help with stalling.

Prankster
I say this because it would get priority for status moves like W-o-W and Toxic, helping to chip away at the enemy's HP each turn. It is desired that this CAP can go offensive or defensive so priority for stat boosting moves could help it set up easily if it is desired not to stall.

Battle Armor
Crits. The cause of many stall pokemon faintings. Lets say you have a Jirachi. After 6 turns you've ended up using cosmic power 6 times. The opposing pokemon is taking 2% of your health each turn, which Jirachi heals with leftovers. Somewhere along the line the opponent gets a crit and defeats jirachi right on the spot. If viable for stalling, we don't want crits do we?

Clear Body
It would be easier to stall if the opponent wasn't crippling you with moves that lowered your defenses. If offensive build, you don't want people lowering your speed or attacking stats do you? If physical build especially because Intimidate does exist and it can be very annoying to have to switch out to restore your attack stat. Just one switch to an intimidate pokemon can render your pokemon useless and sometimes you can't afford to switch. If the opponent can't lower your stats it isn't a problem.

[Bull of Heaven]

I know I've already posted in support of Harvest, but I was interested in Chlorophyll as well until I gave it some more thought. The more I think about it, the more I think that a strong defensive ability is exactly what CAP5 needs to actually fulfill its concept as we've interpreted it so far. We're trying to make a pro-sun and anti-rain defensive pivot with a type combination that has plenty of very exploitable weaknesses (including Ice Beam) and is threatened by Politoed's Scald burns and Toxic. We've more or less decided in the threat discussion that we want to keep our many weaknesses exploitable, including the offensive weakness against Politoed's Steel-type teammates. I'm still hoping the movepool stage will give us some kind of weapon against some Steel-types, but it doesn't look like we should bet on that, and at this point I don't see how Politoed+Scizor doesn't still have a clear advantage over Ninetales+CAP5, given the uneven matchup between the weather starters and Scizor's powerful U-turn. An ability that increases CAP5's longevity may be what we need to actually make that matchup competitive.

This is an ambitious concept, and while a strong ability might not be necessary to adjust the competitive balance of OU, it will certainly help. At the same time, I'm against Regenerator and Natural Cure because they are amazing on any team, and will not necessarily support sun. Harvest seems to give us the best balance between these priorities.

Seeing references to Aurumoth in this threat is making me uneasy. I'm well aware that we went overboard with that project, and that the ability stage was a large part of that, but I'm concerned that we may overcompensate for Aurumoth's problems if we aren't careful. Caution is always valuable in CAP, but it is easy to be too cautious with a concept like this, and with the way this one is developing so far, I'm a little concerned that we might follow a pokemon that is too powerful for its concept with one that is too weak.

[nov]

Swift Swim doesn't seem so bad to me at first, its not like it will increase rains usage. (We can't combine Swift Swim with drizzle after all). That would definitely be the only rain ability we could use on it though, as any other ability will make ppl run toed with it. However, I really do think we need a sun only ability. Sun is too bad right now, and giving it an independent ability is asking for trouble.

Harvest is an issue for me. I feel like if we use it, we will be making CAP5 the premier sweeper of Sun Teams (and a pretty good sweeper even without sun). We are looking for a pokemon that bumps sun all the way up to where rain, and to a lesser extent, sand are. All harvest and chlorophyll will do is give sun another great sweeper (it has plenty of fantastic sweepers already). I am putting my support behind Flower gift. Not because of the attack boost, but because of the special defense boost. (I stronly urge a modest attack stat if we opt to go with flower gift as we don't want it to be pushed into sweeping that way). The fact that sun needs to be up to get use out of this ability GREATLY increases the usage of sun and sun mons, and flower gift's Sp.Def boost will make CAP5 the ultimate offensive pivot against not only rain mons, but Lati@s, who many rain teams rely on when rain isn't up to do the heavy hitting. Its like a special intimidate when sun is up, and that will be absolutely awesome in handling not only water moves (which it will take with ease) but also softening some ice issues it has.

The problem with sun teams is that ninetales just has trouble switching in. We can't alter ninetale's problem with CAP5's ability, but we can encourage sun's usage with it. Abilities like water veil, swift swim, and harvest all combat rain very nicely, but lets be serious, why use CAP5 on a sun team when those abilities work without sun. Abilities like water veil, swift swim, harvest, and adaptability will take CAP5 the wrong way. It will encourage usage on weatherless teams and sand teams (which also have problems against rain), and make CAP5 stand out on its own.

[forestflamerunner]

Alright I have three abilities I want to talk about:

Poison Heal

Firstly, I think Poison Heal is an Amazing ability for this CAP that has flown completely under the radar. The two major themes during this Ability stage have been how do we stop Specs Latios and how do we prevent Status from crippling us. My friends, Poison Heal helps us on both fronts. On the one hand, Toxic Heal prevents us from being statused/ caught by scald burns because we will be rocking toxic orb from the word go. Secondlu, since we r healing 12.5 percent of our health per turn, tanking 1.5 Specs Dracos becomes a lot easier, meaning we won't have to go with cresselia level bulk to wall Latios. True, Poison Heal doesnt exactly encourage CAP5's use in sun but it does everything else we could possibly want. The more I think about it, the more I like this ability, and i would strongly encourage some discussion on it. I'd like to hear why you do or don't like this ability, because i think we may have found a winner here.

Chlorophyll

Second, I really don't like Chlorophyll. I think it is unnecessary and honestly does not help us deal with latios at all. A lot of the chlorophyll supporters have used the idea that chlorophyll helps against latios as a rallying point, so i'm going to dissect that point.

I will start by saying that if a sun and rain team face eachother, rain has a chance of winning/dominating the weather war. If CAP5 is capable of singlehandedly winning the weather war for sun, then fuck countering latios because CAP5 is already too powerful. Assume the opponent is using a rain team with Latios and you are using a sun team with CAP5. CAP5 is your teams answer to Latios. Because of this, it stands to reason that CAP5 should be able to handle Latios in the rain, as that will be the weather condition for at least part of the battle. However, if CAP5 relies on chlorophyll to defeat Latios, it would be unable to defeat Latios in the rain forcing sun teams to find another answer for Latios in those conditions. If, however, CAP5 can counter Latios in the rain, it stands to reason that CAP5 can handle Latios in the sun, making Chlorophyll unnecessary.

Given the above is true, the only real benefit to chlorophyll is that it ties CAP5 to the sun,but honestly, we have Status to worry about and abilities such as Leafguard do everything Chlorophyll does and more, making them both superior options to Chlorophyll.

Harvest

Finally, I would like to address the concerns people have with Harvest. The three most common from my reading are that Harvest doesn't tie us to sun that well, Harvest is to versatile, and Harvest+lum+rest might be too strong, puushing on broken. I will adress each of these in turn.

Although it is true that Harvest doesn't staple us to sun in the same way Chlorophyll and Flower Gift do, I stilll beleive that Harvest does encourage use on sun teams significantly more than an ability like natural cure. I mean, think about it, wouldn't you use Infernape on sun trams a lot more if it was packing Harvest? Furthermore, I feel that Harvest's semi-independence from sun is one of its strengths. Remember, it is very possible that we may find ourselves forced to use CAP5 against rain and sand teams, and in those times being able to use your ability despite the weather may prove useful. Although it is possible that CAP5 may be used on non sun teams with harvest, i think given the fact that we are planning on countering the majority of rain threats in rain, CAP5 will probably be used on non sun teams no matter what its ability is. It would just be nice to have a bit of an incentive to use CAP5 on sun.

Although Harvest is an extremely versatile ability, I doubt CAP5 would end up abusing Harvest in any ways we wouldn't approve of. I mean, the biggest concern i have with Harvest's versatility is that it might run some sweepy sets using Salac or Custap, but this possibility can be eliminated given proper STat manipulation. After all, I dont see blissey trying to pull off a sweep even with harvest, and it has a workable 95 base special attack. As for concerns with resist berries and sitrus, you have to remember that using them comes with a serious opportunity cost of losing Lum, which is imo the most useful defensive berry CAP5 can possibly use period. Even if CAP5 does start rocking one of the other berries though, I really don't see it countering things we dont approve of. With the stat spreads i've been hearing around IRC, i doubt we would stand a chance against the physical attackers that threaten us regardless of the berry we use.

Finally, as to the combination of Lum+Rest+Harvest being broken, i say we can't really say for sure, or even theorymon about that really, until after The stats stage. If by movepool stage we think Rest would break CAP5, we don't give it Rest, not a big deal.

One final note. I think one of the main difference between those of us that prefer Harvest and those that support natural cure is that those of us on the Harvest side think that being forced outby random scald burns inhibits our ability to do our job while those on the pro natural cure side see this as a check on our power. This really comes down to a matter of opinion, and I doubt any amount of rambling will change your opinion on this matter. At the end of the day, I just want to make sure status wont fuck us over so I'd be ok with either of these two abilities.



Currently i have Harvest=Poison Heal>Natural Cure>Everything Else

[ganj4lF]

Originally Posted by Fat forestflamerunner

Poison Heal

Poison Heal pretty much implies CAP5 has already switched in before being useful, so if the opponent manages to bring out his Eon mon early in the game (which I guess is not hard, seeing how a Sun team is composed), Poison Heal won't be useful to avoid being 2HKO'd and again forces us into huge special bulk (or running Protect, but I'm already hearing concerns about 4MSS so I don't know if it's a good thing or not). The same applies to Politoed and Scald burns; you need your pokemon poisoned to fulfill that role, and that's not ideal for me. I got my Poison Heal Breloom burned countless times in BW1 when trying to switch into Scalds...

Furthermore, as you noticed yourself, this ability does nothing to tie CAP5 to Sun. I want to stress this point, our typing (and presumed movepool) is actually very desirable for other kind of teams, and if we don't give it a Sun related ability, the outcome on usage is unpredictable at best, and counterproductive at worst.

If we want to focus on status prevention and recovery, then Harvest is way better than Poison Heal in my opinion. I'd like to focus more on the task of checking Latis to be honest (and therefore prefer Flower Gift or Clorophyll), however I can see how status prevention is an issue and how Harvest solves it and also ties (weakly, but it's better than nothing) to Sun.

[erisia]

Originally Posted by Fat forestflamerunner

However, if CAP5 relies on chlorophyll to defeat Latios, it would be unable to defeat Latios in the rain forcing sun teams to find another answer for Latios in those conditions. If, however, CAP5 can counter Latios in the rain, it stands to reason that CAP5 can handle Latios in the sun, making Chlorophyll unnecessary.

I think that this is a little bit of a narrow view; giving CAP5 a speed boost doesn't make the difference betweeng countering latios and being unable to beat it. Rather, the speed boost would make CAP5 a more effective response, but it will still be able to respond to it in Rain, just with slightly less options. This means that the degree of which CAP5 can check latios depends on the weather, whether it's good or great. Let's say hypothetically that CAP5 can only outspeed Latios in Sun, that it can take a Specs Draco Meteor and live with just over 10%, and that it can OHKO with Crunch or Pursuit as it switches, thus 2HKOing with Pursuit if it stays in. In Sun, this means CAP can switch directly into Latios and OHKO it immediately if it predicts correctly. In Rain, while CAP can't switch into Latios and kill it unless it attempts to switch out the following turn, CAP can still come in after Latios gets a kill and revenge it with Pursuit without any problems. Bear in mind that CAP can still switch into and OHKO Scarf Latios in Rain before it gets 3HKOed, so it's not useless in Rain by any means. So while CAP is better at dealing with Latios in Sun, it still does a decent job in Rain, but its options are more limited. This means that CAP5 can provide services on the back foot when necessary, but does a better job when Sun's already up, which is something I'd really like to promote for this CAP.

[CiteAndPrune]

I'll keep this post to comparing the abilities Korski asked for input about.

Adaptability

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This ability does nothing we can't manage using stats, except MAYBE guaranteeing a KO on Lati@s regardless of switching or staying, but in that case we may have a different problem on our hands with the level of ATK we've given CAP5.

Swift Swim

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Very bad in practice. It's not just bad for optics and bending the rules, but in general if we're supposed to do the concept justice, we need to pick a pro-sun ability, not anti-rain. Pro-sun will encourage sun teams, anti-rain let it function as a rain counter even on other rain teams. There is a difference indeed.

Water Veil

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Has some potential, but I'm not too thrilled by it. In general I'd prefer Water Absorb over Water Veil here. At any rate, we can pick another primary ability and return to Water Veil at a later stage. I firmly disagree with nyttyn about CAP5 not needing a good ability - for it to support sun team's properly, its typing, stats, abilities and movepoll need to work together.

The other abilities aren't worth much mention, except Unaware is a VERY bad choice when we're supposed to counter Lati@s as we'd be taking full powered Draco Meteors due to them ignoring the Sp.Atk drop.

Now for the shortlist abilities. I've ordered them according to personal preference, form least to most appropriate IMO.

Harvest

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Harvest is a good ability and extremely versatile; but that's not what we need for CAP5. We're making a niche sun supporter that's meant to counter the Lati@s pair and eliminate Politoed - other abilities will let us do that without opening up routes to be a bulky booster or potential sweeper or messing up any one of our selected counters on a whim. Its versatility is precisely the argument against using Harvest because we're going to do a very specific job.

Versatility also comes with its own cost, since it'd limit us in stats and movepoll later to more average values in order to avoid abuse cases coming from Harvest interaction, which is something we wouldn't have trouble with (at least not so heavily) if we didn't choose Harvest.

Cloud Nine

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It helps CAP5 perform as an anti-weather starter mon, hunting down Politoed/Tyranitar/Hippowdon, ignoring the rain boost to Water moves so it can tank those better. It doesn't really help versus the Lati twins so we'd need to address them mostly during stats. Not all bad but nothing exciting, though srk gave good points about Cloud Nine that I can mostly agree with.

Chlorophyll

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Strongly encourages using CAP5 on sun teams and gives us more freedom deciding its stats. Without coverage or boosting moves, it definitely wouldn't overlap with Venusaur, so I don't worry about that. The extra Speed it provides will help Pursuit targets we want/need to kill, since the Lati@s, as well as Gengar, are really fast already.

Natural Cure

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A neutral ability with general usefulness that would help CAP5 perform its role as a pivot for much longer. It doesn't help so much in defeating weather starters or the Latis, but Natural Cure is our best ability for creating a supporter CAP5 that can tank hits for other members of sun teams and let them sweep afterwards. The likely NCRest combo also gives CAP5 reliable recovery to tank multiple Draco Meteors or unSTABed Ice Beams throughout the match and not die doing its job, without the chance to become a powerful setup sweeper like it could if Harvest was the ability chosen instead.

Flower Gift

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Strongly ties CAP5 to sun teams and boosts the kind of stats it would need in order to perform as an anti-Lati@s Pokemon, tanking the Draco Meteor and Pursuiting them afterwards. It runs the risk of leaving CAP5 weak in unfavourable weather, but that's a fair weakness we can handle, I think. It's a solid option and probably our best anti-Dragon ability overall.

TL;DR version: Flower Gift > Natural Cure > Chlorophyll. Also please don't give Harvest to CAP5 when the versatility goes counter to fulfilling a specific niche job for the sun team.

[capefeather]

Well, my post will be directed mainly toward Adaptability, Swift Swim and Water Veil.

I've wanted somebody to sell Adaptability, but I haven't really seen anything, and I can't think of anything, either. The only big point is that it widens the gap between CAP 5's STAB moves and its coverage moves. However, considering the threat list, it doesn't look like coverage moves will be all that relevant on CAP 5, at least not relevant enough to warrant what would necessarily be an attempt at a surgical power adjustment, well ahead of the actual movepool stage, and even ahead of the stat stage. We can explore Adaptability in the secondary ability discussion/polls, but it simply isn't appropriate for the primary ability discussion/polls.

Swift Swim is a weird suggestion, to say the least. It's a suggestion that only works because of a Smogon rule, but then again, stuff like Spore works the same way. My concern, as others have stated, is that it is merely anti-rain and does not do enough against every threat to the concept that we're facing. It's too focused on one collection of threats. For what it's worth, though, I prefer it to the other "Needs Discussion" abilities.

Water Veil seems like a cool idea, but in the end, it's really just Swift Swim under a different (weaker) guise, in the sense that it focuses only on a single aspect of the threats to the concept. I strongly disagree with this approach, especially when it's leading to abilities that are even more specific than Swift Swim and Natural Cure. If we don't have a relatively dramatic concept lock-in now, when will it happen? Stats, when we scramble over trying to satisfy every concern and end up with really high stats? Movepool, when we try to decide which move(s) would be most appropriate for CAP 5 to be forced to use after a Latios Draco Meteor, instead of Pursuit / Crunch / Night Slash? This might actually happen if we're not serious about giving CAP 5 at least one ability that decisively cements it as a key sun player. This doesn't have to be a sun ability, but a sun ability would be pretty nice for it.

Part of what we need to determine here is how well we should fare against Water-types compared to special offensive Dragon-types. We might need to sacrifice a bit of one for a bit of the other. I think that this is a very pertinent question to answer when picking the primary ability (and maybe even the secondary ability).

EDIT: For what it's worth,

<+capefeather> !usage latios items
<@TIBot> Choice Scarf 33.353% | Choice Specs 26.607% | Life Orb 18.415% | Expert Belt 12.174% | Leftovers 4.693% | Other 4.758%

[Birkal*]

I don't really have a lot to say here. I believe that picking an ability that relates to sun in some way is optimal. Yes, we can make a great fit for sun teams with an ability like Natural Cure or Poison Heal, but I don't think that will do anything to support sun team usage. I'd imagine CAP5 would just be used equally on all playstyles just because it's a good Pokemon. So I think pushing ourselves to a sun related ability is for the best.

I think in terms of sun abilities, Harvest is the smallest of evils. Chlorophyll terrifies me because this is CAP and I'm almost convinced that we will make it a bulky sweeper if given that ability. I can picture scenarios where that wouldn't be the case, but people are going to want to push offensive stats to match Chlorophyll. I can almost hear the "x base attack allows us to OHKO Latias with Pursuit," and that scares me. Flower Gift will certainly force CAP 5 onto sun teams, but it doesn't do much in terms of Politoed; it's still a strong contender though. That leaves us with Harvest. I can't imagine Lumrest being broken in a metagame swarming with U-turn, and it does encourage usage of sun teams to maximize its power.

Two things that I've noted about arguments against Harvest: 1) Versatility is a good thing. I consider Necturna one of our most successful projects, and she was incredibly diverse. CAP has shown that it has the ability to balance versatility; I can imagine the same thing happening here. 2) Do not assume CAP 5 Harvest will run every kind of berry when making your arguments. Like every other Pokemon, CAP 5 will have to make choices. It cannot run Bug-resist Berry, Sitrus, and Lum all at the same time. That limited power will allow CAP 5 to be stopped once the berry is revealed. Usually, unknown variables are devastating on offensive threats because one wrong move and you're getting swept by it. As a defensive pivot, this unknown variable of "which berry is it" isn't as strong simply because it's not going to be sweeping any time soon. The berry will be revealed before it can do anything meaningful, methinks.